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THE SUN-MYSTERY IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN HISTORY
The Palladium

WE HAVE BEEN studying how the living form of man, his soul and his
spirit, are related to the cosmos. The various aspects of this subject
presented in recent lectures may be summarized in somewhat the
following way: —

In the deep foundations of man's being lies the will. In many respects
the will is the most mysterious and secret element in human nature. It
is obvious that aberrations, inclinations that often run counter to
the world's well-being surge up from fathomless depths of the moral
life; everything experienced by the soul in the form of pricks of
conscience or self-reproach streams up from the deep ground of the
will.

The reason why the will is so mysterious and secret is that in many
respects it is a highly indeterminate force; there is in it an
instinctive element over which we have little control and which drives
us hither and thither on the turbulent waves of life often without our
being able to claim that any conscious impulses are racing effect. In
another respect too, namely in respect of our knowledge of the
operations of the will, it has again and again been emphasized that
these operations of the will are as withdrawn from human consciousness
as the experiences of deep, dreamless sleep; so that in this respect
too, the will is an indeterminate, mysterious element.

But when we think of man's spiritual nature we cannot conceive that
this spirituality is active in him only during his waking hours or in
his conscious mental life; the fact is that this spirituality is at
work in him during sleep too, within that part of his being where his
will lies and which, like the experiences of deep sleep, is wrapt in
unconsciousness.

Spirit is therefore also present and at work in the sleeping human
being. Two aspects of the will can be distinguished. — There is first
of all the will which — unless we are out-and-out idlers — spurs us
to activity from the time of waking until that of falling asleep.
True, we cannot perceive the will in actual operation, but the effects
rise into our consciousness inasmuch as we can form mental concepts
and images of them. We do not know how the will-impulse works in us
when we are walking; but we can see ourselves stepping forward. We form
mental images of the workings of our will and in this sense are
conscious of its effects. That is one aspect of the will.

The other aspect is that the will is also active in us while we sleep;
for then inner processes are taking place, processes that are also
operations of the will, only we are not aware of them — precisely
because we are asleep. But just as the sun also shines during the
night on the other side of the earth where we are not living, so does
will stream through our being while we are asleep, although we have no
consciousness of it.

Thus two kinds of will can be distinguished: an inner will and an
outer will. The workings of the outer will are made manifest to us
while we are awake; those of the inner will take effect while we are
asleep. Strictly speaking, the inner will is not revealed to us;
nevertheless when we look back, its effects can be apprehended
afterwards, as having been part of the condition of sleep.

The will is present as it were in ocean depths of the soul. It surges
upwards in waves. But just because we must admit that the will is at
work during sleep, when the bodily part of our being is engaged in
purely organic activity, neither pervaded with soul nor illumined by
spirit, it follows that the will as such has to do with this organic
activity. The will that is working while we are asleep has to do with
organic activity, inasmuch as organic processes, life-processes take
place in us. These processes are essentially connected with the will.

But during waking activity too, that is to say when our will is in
flow, life-processes are taking place. The will takes effect in the
processes of internal metabolism. So that here again we can point to
organic activity.

Out of the ocean-depths of will in the human being, waves which come
to expression in the form of feeling, surge upwards. We know that
feeling is a dimly apprehended experience, that so far as actual
consciousness is concerned it has really only the intensity of a
dream. But at any rate it is clearer than the workings of will. It
raises into greater clarity what lies in the ocean-depths of man's
being. Feeling brings a certain light into, intensifies,
consciousness; the two poles of the will rise into this intensified
consciousness and in it both the inner will and the outer will are
made manifest.

Thus we distinguish two kinds of feeling, as we did in the case of the
will: an inner will in the sleeping state, an outer will in the waking
state. One kind of feeling surges upwards from the will that is
connected with man's sleeping condition. This kind of feeling lives
itself out in the antipathies — taking the word in the widest sense
— unfolded by the human being. This is feeling which tends towards
antipathy. Whereas the will that is involved in outer activity and
therefore leads man into the external world, manifests in all those
experiences of feeling which have in them the quality of sympathy. The
dreamlike experience of feeling which comes to expression in
sympathies and antipathies aroused by different forms of life, by
forms of art or of nature, or in sympathies and antipathies connected
more with the organs and arising in us through smell or taste or
through a sense of well-being or comfort — all this weaving activity
belongs to the soul. Will therefore reveals itself in organic
activity, feeling in activity of the soul.

If the life of soul is studied from this point of view, great
illumination will be shed upon it. Waking life arouses in us sympathy
with the surrounding world. Our antipathies really come from more
unconscious realms. They press upwards from the sleeping will. It is
as though our sympathies lie more on the surface, whereas antipathies
rise up through them from unplumbed depths. Antipathies repel;
antipathies draw us away from the surrounding world; we isolate
ourselves, shut ourselves within our own being. Inwardly up-streaming
antipathies are the antecedents of human egotism. The greater a man's
egotism, the more strongly is the element of antipathy working in him.
He wants to isolate himself, to feel enclosed within his own being.

In normal life we do not notice the constant interplay of sympathies
and antipathies in the life of soul. But we become aware of it when
our connection with the outer world becomes abnormal, and when the
antipathetic element that derives from sleep also works in an abnormal
way. This happens when our breathing, for example, functions
irregularly during sleep and we have nightmares. In a nightmare, the
soul is putting up an antipathetic defence against something that is
trying to penetrate into us, preventing us from full experience of our
egohood.

We are gazing here into deep secrets of human experience. If a man
unfolds the element of antipathy in his life of feeling so strongly
that it plays into his waking life, his whole being is permeated with
antipathy which then lays hold of his astral body; his astral body is
steeped in the element of antipathy; antipathy streams out from him
like an abnormal aura. It may then happen that he begins to feel
antipathy to people to whom his attitude was otherwise neutral, or
indeed even to those he loved or knew intimately. These conditions can
give rise to persecution mania in all its forms. When feelings of
antipathy not to be explained by outer circumstances are experienced,
this is due to the overflowing antipathies in the soul, that is to
say, to an abnormal intensification of the one pole in the life of
soul which forces its way upwards out of sleep. If this antipathy gets
the upper hand in a human being, he becomes a world-hater, and such
hatred can assume incredible proportions. The aim of all education and
all social endeavor should be to prevent human beings from becoming
world-haters.

But think of it. — If what surges up from the ocean-depths of man's
being can promote overweening egotism when it gets the upper hand —
and persecution mania in all forms is nothing but superabundant,
excessive egotism — if all this is possible, what is there to be said
of the inner will itself, which a beneficent creation conceals by
means of sleep? We have no knowledge at all of how this inner will
permeates our limbs, our entire organism. The most that can be said is
that now and then, through strange dreams, something comes up into the
consciousness of what lies in the will that works in our organism
during sleep. What lives in this will lies — and rightly so for the
ordinary consciousness — on yonder side of the Threshold. He who comes
to know it, learns to know the force by which the human being can be
led to uttermost evil. The deepest secret of human life is that we
have the counterbalance of our organic activity in the very forces
which, were they to gain control in the conscious life of a man, would
make him into a criminal.

Let it be remembered that nothing in the world is in itself evil or
good. What is radically evil when it breaks into our conscious life,
is the counterbalance for our spent life-forces when it take effect in
its right place, namely as the regulator of organic activity during
the sleeping state.

If you ask: What is the nature of the forces which make compensation
for the spent life-forces? — the answer is: They are the forces of
evil. Evil has its mission — and it is here. If this becomes known to
anyone through spiritual training, it is for him as it was for earlier
seers, something of which they said: Of its essential nature it is not
lawful to speak, for sinful is the mouth that speaks of it, and sinful
the ear that hears of it. — Nevertheless man must realize that life
is a process fraught with danger and that evil lies in its deep
foundations as a necessary force.

Now these waves of the will surge even higher — into the conceptual
life, the mental life. The sleeping will lights up in feeling, and
when it surge upwards into mental life, it becomes still clearer but at
the same time denuded qualitatively — it becomes abstract. In feeling
fraught with antipathy there is still a certain lively intensity. When
this element of antipathetic feeling surges into the conceptual life,
it comes to expression in the form of negative judgments, judgments of
rejection or denial. Everything we negate in life, everything the
logician calls “negation”, negative judgment, is the uprush of
antipathetic feeling, or of the inner will, into the conceptual life.

And when sympathetic feeling — which has its origin in the will of
waking life, in the outer will — rises up into the conceptual life,
our judgments are affirmative. We have arrived at something which, as
you see, lives in us as abstraction only. In feeling, inasmuch as we
unfold sympathies and antipathies, there is still intensity of life.
Whereas in acts of judgment — which are a mental, conceptual activity
— we are, as it were, immobile, contemplative observers of the world.
We affirm and negate. We do not come to the point of actual antipathy;
we merely negate. It is an abstract process. We do not rouse ourselves
to antipathy: we merely say, no. In the same way we do not rouse
ourselves to sympathy: we merely say, yes. We are raised above our
relation to the outer world — to the level of abstract judgment.

This, then, is a purely mental, concept-forming activity, which can be
called spiritual activity. But will, feeling and conceptual activity
can surge even higher — into the domain of the senses. When negative
judgment surges into the domain of the senses, what is the result? The
condition wherein we perceive nothing. If we think of it in relation
to the most obvious process of perception, we can say: It is the
experience of darkness — where we see nothing. On the other hand,
affirmative judgment becomes experience of light. The same could be
said with regard to the experience of silence, or of tone and sound.
To all the twelve senses it would be correct to apply what has here
been said in connection with the experiences of light and of darkness.

And now let us ask: What, in reality, is this activity in the domain
of the senses? I We have spoken of organic activity, activity of the
life of soul, spiritual activity. Spiritual activity is merely a
concept-forming activity but it is still our own. What takes place
between the senses and the outer world is in truth no longer our own
activity, for there the world is playing into us. It would be quite
correct to depict the eye as an independent entity; what takes place
in the eye is that the outer world penetrates into the organism as it
were through a gulf. We are no longer standing in the world with our
own activity, but this is divine activity. This divine activity weaves
through the world surrounding us. Darkness inclines in the direction
of negation, light in the direction of affirmation.

The influence of this divine activity upon man in his relationship to
the world was an especially vivid experience in the wisdom of the
second Post-Atlantean epoch. — God in the Light — that is to say,
the Divine with a Luciferic quality; God in the Darkness — the Divine
with an Ahrimanic quality. — Thus did the ancient Persians experience
the world. And to them the sun was the representative of the outer world.
The sun as the divine source of Light — so it was experienced
in the second Post-Atlantean epoch. On the other hand in the third
Post-Atlantean epoch (Egypto-Chaldean) men experienced more strongly
the sphere lying between judgment and feeling. At that time they did
not feel so intensely that the Divine in the outer world is
experienced in light or darkness, but rather in the impact between
conceptual activity and feeling. Experience of divine activity among
the Egyptians and Chaldeans caused men to bring an element of
antipathy into negative judgments and sympathy into affirmative
judgments. And only when we are able to decipher and understand the
pictorial or other records of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch shall we
realize that all were created and shaped out of sympathetic
affirmation or antipathetic negation. When you look at Egyptian
statues, figures on tombs, and so forth, you can still feel that their
forms give expression to sympathetic affirmation or antipathetic
negation. It is simply not possible to create a sphinx without
bringing into it sympathies and antipathies inhering in the conceptual
life. Men did not experience merely light and darkness but something
of the element of life that is present in sympathies and antipathies.
In that epoch the sun was experienced as the divine source of Life.

And now we come to the Greco-Latin epoch when man's experience of
direct communion with the outer world was largely lost. In my book
Riddles of Philosophy
(see Note 1)
I have shown that although in that age man
still felt his thoughts as we today feel sense-impressions, he was
already approaching the condition in which we live at the present
time, when owing to the development of the ego we no longer feel any
really living connection with the external world, when with our ego we
are practically asleep within the body, are in a state of slumber.
This condition was not so pronounced in the Greeks, but to some extent
it was certainly present. To understand the Greek nature we must
realize that the Greek had already begun to live very intensely in his
body — not as intensely as we do, but nevertheless intensely. — Not
so the ancient Persians. The wise men among them did not believe that
they were living enclosed within their skins but rather that they were
borne on the waves of the light through the whole universe. In the
Greek, this experience of cosmic life was already losing intensity,
falling into slumber within the body. When we ourselves are asleep,
the ego and astral body are outside the physical body; but our waking,
in comparison with that of the ancient Persians, really amounts to
sleep. When the Persians woke from sleep — I am speaking of course of
the ancient Persians as described in my
An Outline of Occult Science
(see Note 2)
— it was as though the light actually penetrated into them, into
their senses.

We no longer feel that at the moment of waking from sleep we summon
the light into our eyes. For us the light is outside, phantomlike. Nor
could the Greeks any longer see in the sun the actual source of Life;
they felt that the sun was something that pervaded them inwardly. They
felt the element in which the sun lives within the human being as the
element of Eros — the element of Love. Thus: the sun as the divine
source of Love. Eros — the sun-nature within the human being
— this was what the Greek experienced.
Then, from about the fourth century A.D. onwards, came the time when,
fundamentally speaking, the sun was no longer regarded as anything but
a physical orb in space, when the sun was darkened for man. To the
ancient Persians the sun was the actual reflector of the Light weaving
through space. To the Egyptians and Chaldeans the sun was the Life
surging and pulsating through the universe. The Greeks felt the sun as
that which infused Love into the living organism, guiding Eros through
the waves of sentient existence.

This experience of the sun sank more and more deeply into man's being
and gradually vanished into the ocean-depths of the soul. And it is in
the ocean-depths of the soul that man bears the sun-nature today. It
is beyond his reach, because the Guardian of the Threshold stands
before it; it lies in the depths of being as a mystery of which the
ancient teachings said: Let it not be uttered — for sinful is the
mouth that speaks of it and sinful the ear that hears of it.

In the fourth century A.D. there were schools which taught that the
sun-mystery must remain untold, that a civilization knowing nothing of
the sun-mystery must now arise. Behind everything that takes place in
the external world lie forces and powers which give guidance from the
universe. One of the instruments of these guiding powers was the Roman
Emperor Constantine. It was under him that Christianity assumed the
form which denies the sun.

Living in that same century was one whose ardor for what he had
learnt in the Mysteries as the last remnants of the ancient,
instinctive wisdom, caused him to attach little importance to the
development of contemporary civilization. This was Julian the
Apostate. He fell by the hand of a murderer because he was intent upon
passing on this ancient tradition of the threefold Mystery of the Sun.
And the world would have none of it.

Today, of course, it must be realized that the old instinctive wisdom
must become conscious wisdom, that what has sunk into the
subconsciousness, into purely organic activity and even into
sub-organic activity, must once again be lifted into the light of
consciousness. We must re-discover the Sun-Mystery.

But just as when the Sun-Mystery had been lost, bitter enemies rose up
against the one who wished this mystery to be proclaimed to the world,
and brought about his death, so again enemies are working against the
new Sun-Mysteries which must be brought to the world by spiritual
science. We are living now at the other pole of historical evolution.
In the fourth century A.D. there was sunset; now there must be
sunrise.

In this sense Constantine and Julian the Apostate are two symbols of
historical evolution. Julian the Apostate stands as it were upon the
ruins of olden times, intent upon building again out of these ruins
the forms of the ancient wisdom, upon preserving for humanity those
ancient memorials which Christianity, assuming a material form for the
first time in the days of Constantine, had destroyed. Countless
treasures were destroyed, countless works of art, countless scripts
and records of the ancient wisdom. Everything that could in any
possible way have given men an inkling of the ancient Sun-Mystery was
destroyed.

It is true that in order to reach inner freedom, it was necessary for
men to pass through the stage of believing that a globe of gas is
moving through universal space — but the fact is that physicists
would be very astonished if they could take a journey in space; they
would discover that the sun is not a globe of gas giving out light —
that is nonsense — but that it is a mere reflector which cannot
itself radiate light but at most throw it back. The truth is that in
the spiritual sense, light streams out from Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury,
Venus and the Moon.

Physically it appears as though the sun gives the planets light, but
in reality it is the planets that radiate light to the sun and the sun
is the reflector. As such it was recognized by the wise men of ancient
Persia with their instinctive wisdom, and in this sense the sun was
regarded as the earthly source of Light — not indeed as the source
itself, but as the reflector of the Light. Then, among the Egyptians
and Chaldeans, the sun became the reflector of Life and among the
Greeks, the reflector of Love.

This was the conception that Julian the Apostate wanted to preserve —
and he was done away with. In order to reach freedom it was indeed
necessary that men should hold for a time to the superstition of the
sun as a globe of gas in space, giving out light — a superstition
enunciated as a categorical truth in every book of physics today. But
our task must be to penetrate to the reality.

In truth, Julian the Apostate and Constantine stand before us as two
symbols ... Julian the Apostate was bent upon preserving those
ancient memorials of the world which could, in a certain way, have
made it possible for the true Sun-Mystery to find its way to men.
Indeed during the first centuries of Christendom, Christ was still a
Sun-Figure — an Apollo.

This Sun-Mystery was felt to be the greatest spiritual treasure
possessed by mankind. And it was symbolized by what was known as the
Palladium. It was said that the Palladium had once been in Troy and
that the priests of the Mysteries there saw in it the means whereby,
in sacred ritual and cult, they revealed to the people the true nature
of the sun. Then the Palladium was taken to Rome, and its presence
there was a secret known to the initiate in Rome. The initiated
priests of the Romans, and even the first Emperors — Augustus, for
example — worked in the world out of a direct consciousness that the
greatest of all treasures was represented in Rome, at all events in an
outer symbol, inasmuch as beneath the foundations of the most
venerated Roman temple, lay the Palladium, its existence known only to
those who were initiated into the deepest secrets of Roman existence
and destiny. But in a spiritual sense it had become known to those
whose task it was to bring Christianity to the world. And out of the
knowledge that the Palladium was guarded in Rome, the early Christians
made their way thither. A spiritual reality lay behind these journeys.

But when, under Constantine, Christianity was secularized, the
Palladium was taken away from Rome. Constantine founded
Constantinople, and he caused the Palladium to be buried in the earth
under a pillar erected there by his orders. Thus it transpired that in
its further development Roman Christianity was deprived of the
knowledge of the Sun-Mystery by the very Emperor who established
Christianity in Rome in its rigid, mechanical forms. In the
secularization of Christianity brought about by Constantine, the
cosmic wisdom was lost to Christianity — and this comes to expression
in the removal of the Palladium from Rome to Constantinople.

In certain Slavonic regions — people always interpret things
according to their own conditions — a belief reigned for centuries,
lasting indeed until the beginning of the twentieth century, that in a
none too distant future the Palladium will be removed from
Constantinople to another place — to a Slavonic town, as the people
believed. At all events the Palladium is waiting, expecting to be
removed from the darkening influence shed upon it by Constantinople to
that locality which, by its very nature, will bring it into complete
darkness. Yes, the Palladium goes to the East, where the decadence of
the ancient wisdom still survives but is passing into darkness. And in
the further evolution of the world, everything depends upon whether —
just as the sun is the reflector of the light bestowed upon it from
the universe — the Palladium-treasure is illumined by a wisdom born
from the riches of the knowledge living in the West. The Palladium,
the ancient heritage brought from Troy to Rome, from Rome to
Constantinople, and which, as it is said, will be carried still
farther into the darkness of the East — this Sun-treasure must wait
until it is redeemed spiritually in the West, released from the dark
shadows of a purely external knowledge of nature. Thus the task of the
future is bound up with the holiest traditions of European
development.

Legends are still extant, even today, among; those who are initiated
into these things — often they are quite simple people going about
here and there in the world. These legends tell of the removal of the
Palladium, the treasure of wisdom, from Troy to Rome, from Rome to
Constantinople when Roman Christianity was secularized; they tell of
its future removal to the East when the East, denuded of the ancient
wisdom, will have fallen into utter decadence; and they tell of the
necessity for this sun-treasure to receive new light from the West.

The Sun-Mystery has disappeared into the nether regions of human
existence. Through spiritual-scientific development we must find it
again. The Sun-Mystery must be found again — otherwise the Palladium
will vanish into the darkness of the East. It is wrongful today to
utter a saying as untrue as Ex Oriente Lux. The light can no longer
come from the East, for the East is in decadence. Nevertheless the
East waits — for it will possess the sun-treasure, even though it be
in darkness — it waits for the light of the West. But today men are
groping in darkness, arranging conferences in the darkness, are looking
expectantly towards — Washington! Only those “Washingtons”
that speak with the tones of the spiritual world — not conferences
looking for the darkness that surrounds the Palladium, for an open
door for trade in China — only those conferences will bring salvation
which are conducted in the West in such a way that the Palladium can
be kindled once again to light. For like a fluorescent body, the
Palladium, in itself, is dark; if it is suffused with light, then it
becomes radiant. And so it will be with the wisdom of the East: dark
in itself, it will light up, will become fluorescent when it is
permeated by the wisdom of the West, by the spiritual light of the
West.

But this the West does not understand. Only when the Palladium legend
is brought into the clear light of consciousness, only when men can
again feel true compassion for one like Julian the Apostate who felt
constrained to ignore the age in which the light of freedom could
germinate in the darkness, who longed to preserve the old instinctive
wisdom and therefore met with his death — only when men realize that
Constantine, in giving an externalized form of Christianity to the
Romans, took from them the light, the wisdom, and sent Christianity
into the darkness — only when men realize that the light whereby the
Palladium can again be made to shine must be born out of modern
nature-knowledge in the best sense — only then will an important
chapter of world-history be brought to fulfillment. For only then will
that which became Western when the Greeks see Troy on fire, become
Western-Eastern. The light that flamed from Troy is present even
to-day; it is present but it is shrouded in darkness. It must drawn
forth from the darkness; the Palladium must again be illumined.

If our hearts are in the right place, knowledge of the course of
history can fire us with enthusiasm; and this same enthusiasm will
give us the right feeling for the impulses which spiritual science
would fain impart.